Posted By admin On December 11, 2009 @ 4:14 pm In Featured Stories | 189 Comments

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
December 11, 2009

Earlier today, the House passed the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act on a vote of 223-202. The bill contains an amendment authored by Rep. Ron Paul that will allow the Government Accountability Office to audit monetary policy decisions made by the Federal Reserve.

Ron Paul voted against the bill even though it contains an audit the Fed provision.

Ron Paul talked with Alex Jones about the bill and his amendment today. A call placed to Jesse Benton, Paul’s press secretary, by the Alex Jones Show after Paul’s appearance clarified Paul’s position on the bill. Paul supported his amendment but opposed passage of the larger bill and did not vote for it. A roll call of the vote can be viewed here.

On December 11, The Wall Street Journal asked Paul if he would vote for the bill. “For some people who work in a conventional way, it would be, but not for me,” he told the newspaper. “People have asked me, and I say I’ll just do what I usually do. I’ll look at the whole bill, and try to make the bill as good as possible but if it’s still something I can’t endorse, then I’ll vote against final passage. But I always try to support all the amendments that I think will improve it, but I treated my amendment like I treat every other amendment.”

The 1,300-page bill establishes a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, a systemic-risk oversight council, new capital requirements for financial institutions, and a “resolution” authority for non-banks. It also requires financial products like derivatives to be more transparent, overhauls rating agency laws, changes securitization rules, and alters the FDIC bank rescue fund.

Critics, however, say the bill will hurt small business and reduce competition. “The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act represents a major intrusion by government into this important sector of the economy,” FreedomWorks reports today. “With new fees, regulations, and reporting requirements, the legislation threatens jobs, global competitiveness, and economic growth. At the same time, the legislation creates sweeping new powers for the oversight of private businesses, from insurance to banks to mortgage brokers. Ultimately, consumers may bear the brunt of the legislation. For example, regulations released by a new consumer protection agency may have unintended consequences that reduce access to credit while raising the price of credit.”

Ohio Democrat Dennis Kucinich also voted against the bill. Kucinich believes the legislation does not go far enough in regulating over-the-counter derivatives. On his website today, Kucinich noted numerous loopholes in the bill “that sophisticated financial industry insiders will exploit with ease.”

Kucinich praised the efforts of Paul and Alan Grayson to include in the bill the authority of the GAO to conduct audits of the Federal Reserve. However, he writes, “the financial crisis — and the government’s extraordinary response — taught us monetary policy and regulatory policy must be exclusive. Relying on one entity to conduct both activities so vital to a healthy financial system will inevitably give rise to conflicts of interest. This bill, however, further conflates these policies at the Fed by giving the Fed more regulatory authority.”

In other words, regardless of the prospect of an audit of the Fed, the bill invests even more power in the Federal Reserve.

Published on Monday, December 14, 2009 by The Nation
Financial 'Reform' Preserves Too Big Banks, Too Much Speculation
by John Nichols

The U.S. House has voted for legislation that is described as "financial services reform."
But most of the "reforms" are so mild that the savviest of the nation's big bankers will be breathing sighs of relief, rather than worrying about being regulated into good behavior.

That's not to say that the House bill is meaningless. It proposes some valuable shifts, including the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency that could – if infused with proper authority and backed by a White House and Congress that want to tip the regulatory balance in favor of the great mass of Americans – give bankers and speculators some headaches.

Unfortunately, that's a vague promise rather than a firm one.

Congressman Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who crafted the measure, declared Friday that, "We have a set of rules in place that will allow the most productive parts of the free market economy, and particularly the financial system, to play the role they should play, but with much less chance of abuse."

Up to a point, this is true. The legislation, which passed on a 223-202 vote (with all Republicans and 27 Democrats opposing), does sketch the rough outlines for real reform.

The problem is that the details are so sketchy that bank and insurnace company lobbyists have plenty of openings to game the system in their favor. And they could get even more as the Senate weighs reforms and then what are expected to be very different measures are reconciled, reviewed again by both chambers and sent to desk of a president whose administration has expressed discomfort with pieces of the House bill.

In other words, while there were those who claimed on Friday that the House had enacted "the biggest change in oversight of Wall Street since the Great Depression" and that "this bill puts the referees back on the field," the big banks aren't going to get sidelined -- let alone broken up -- anytime soon.

That weakness caused some of the House's most serious backers of banking reform -- including Ohio Democrats Marcy Kaptur and Dennis Kucinich -- to oppose what they saw as an insufficient initiative. "Although I am supportive of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency as well as other provisions in the bill," Kucinich explained, "ultimately I do not think this bill adequately addresses the causes of the financial crisis, and I do not believe the reforms are sufficient to prevent another financial crisis from occurring." Many other Democrats who knew the bill was flawed swallowed hard and votes for it because they saw it as opposing a framework for constraining at least some abuses by bankers and speculators.

On the plus side, as The New York Times notes:

The bill would create, at a cost that could run into the billions, a Consumer Financial Protection Agency in an attempt to head off the kinds of lending practices that led many homeowners to take on mortgages they could not afford.
The bill would bring regulation for the first time to a portion of the over-the-counter market for derivatives. It would create a process for dealing with troubles at very large financial institutions that might pose a risk to the financial system and the economy, and require large firms to contribute to a fund to help with an orderly dissolution of those institutions if they are in danger of failing.

And the bill includes a number of other provisions to address executive compensation, investor protections and regulation of hedge funds.

On the negative side, the House legislation fails to dismantle even the biggest of "too big to fail" firms that could still collapse the U.S. economy. It also fails to even address the most serious abuses of the world's $600 trillion derivatives market.

Why is the House bill so disappointing?

Of course, Republican opposition was a factor.

But the biggest frustration was the Democratic block that tried, at every turn, to defend the big banks and speculators.

Although he had plenty of competition from the likes of Illinois Democrat Melissa Bean (who sought at one point to roll back existing protections for consumers), the the worst player was Idaho Democrat Walter Minnick.

Minnick tried to gut consumer protections in the House legislation by blocking creation of a potentially-powerful Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which would have the authority to regulate everything from mortgages to credit card rates.

Specifically, Minnick proposed an amendment to replace real regulation with a maintain-the-status-quo "council of regulators. (The Idaho Democrat was spectacularly wrong, as Consumers Union President Jim Guest explained: "Consumers have paid a very steep price for years of weak federal oversight of unscrupulous banking and lending practices. It's time for Congress to put an end to do-nothing financial industry oversight and make sure that consumers have a real watchdog looking out for their interests.")